...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. - Noam Chomsky

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

[…] there are dangerous tendencies in the ideology of the welfare state intelligentsia who claim to possess the technique and understanding required to manage our “postindustrial society” and to organize an international society dominated by the American superpower. [...] Insofar as the technique of management and control exists, it can be used to consolidate the authority of those who exercise it and to diminish spontaneous and free experimentation with new social forms, as it can limit the possibilities for reconstruction of soci­ety in the interests of those who are now, to a greater or lesser extent, dispossessed.

Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.